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P.I.D. Radio 4/22/07: 23, 33, 2121

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April 22, 2007

What more can be said about the shootings that left 33 dead at Virginia Tech last Monday? About 42 minutes&#39; worth, apparently. We ask questions about a few details that bother us about the tragedy, which include a federal "stand down" order to local police and EMTs, the jamming of local cell phone service, and differing descriptions of the shooter.

We also talk about Wednesday&#39;s shooting on the streets of Columbia, less than a mile from the bunker. What all will come of this?

Well, we expect to hear calls for tighter restrictions on handguns and mandatory mental health screening for elementary school students. Sounds good, but it ultimately means more government control over our lives and our children.

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P.I.D. Radio 4/29/07: Peter Levenda - What Made Cho a Killer?

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April 29, 2007

Today we feature audio from a radio interview Derek conducted Friday, April 27th with Peter Levenda, author of the excellent three-volume set Sinister Forces: A Grimoire of American Political Witchcraft.

Simply put, Peter is as bothered by certain details of the Virginia Tech massacre as we are, and he&#39;s concerned that the major media&#39;s superficial analysis of the case is leading us to accept Cho Seung-Hui as nothing more than the latest in a long line of lone gunmen.

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What May Come: Asian Americans and the Virginia Tech Shootings

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By Tamara K. Nopper | 04.19.2007

April 17, 2007

Like many, I was glued to the television news yesterday, keeping updated about the horrific shootings at Virginia Tech University. I was trying to deal with my own disgust and sadness, especially since my professional life as a graduate student and college instructor is tied to universities. And then the other shoe dropped. I found out from a friend that the news channel she was watching had reported the shooter as Asian. It has now been reported, after much confusion, that the shooter is Cho Seung-Hui, a South Korean immigrant and Virginia Tech student.

As an Asian American woman, I am keenly aware that Asians are about to become a popular media topic if not the victims of physical backlash. Rarely have we gotten as much attention in the past fifteen years, except, perhaps, during the 1992 Los Angeles Riots. Since then Asians are seldom seen in the media except when one of us wins a golfing match, Woody Allen has sex, or Angelina Jolie adopts a kid.

I am not looking forward to the onslaught of media attention. If history truly does have clues about what will come, there may be several different ways we as Asian Americans will be talked about.

One, we will watch white media pundits and perhaps even sociologists explain what they understand as an "Asian" way of being. They will talk about how Asian males presumably have fragile "egos" and therefore are culturally prone to engage in kamikaze style violence. These statements will be embedded with racist tropes about Japanese military fighters during WWII or the Viet Congâ€”the crazy, calculating, and hidden Asian man who will fight to the death over presumably nothing.

In the process, the white media might actually ask Asian Americans our perspectives for a change. We will probably be expected to apologize in some way for the behavior of another Asianâ€”something whites never have to collectively do when one of theirs engages in (mass) violence, which is often. And then some of us might succumb to the Orientalist logic of the media by eagerly promoting Asian Americans as real Americans and therefore unlike Asians overseas who presumably engage in culturally reprehensible behavior. In other words, if we get to talk at all, Asian Americans will be expected to interpret, explain, and distance themselves from other Asians just to get airtime.

Or perhaps the media will take the color-blind approach instead of a strictly eugenic one. The media might try to whitewash the situation and treat Cho as just another alienated middle-class suburban kid. In some ways this is already happeningâ€”hence the constant referrals to the proximity of the shootings to the 8th anniversary of the Columbine killings. The media will repeat over and over words from a letter that Cho left behind speaking of "rich kids," and "deceitful charlatans." They will ask what&#39;s going on in middle-class communities that encourage this type of violence. In the process they may never talk about the dirty little secret about middle-class assimilation: for non-whites, it does not always prevent racial alienation, rage, or depression. This may be surprising given that we are bombarded with constant images suggesting that racial harmony will exist once we are all middle-class. But for many of us who have achieved middle-class life, even if we may not openly admit it, alienation does not stop if you are not white.

But the white media, being as tricky as it is, may probably talk about Cho in ways that reflect a combination of both traditional eugenic and colorblind approaches. They will emphasize Cho&#39;s ethnicity and economic background by wondering what would set off a hard-working, quiet, South Korean immigrant from a middle-class dry-cleaner- owning family. They will wonder why Cho would commit such acts of violence, which we expect from Middle Easterners and Muslims and those crazy Asians from overseas, but not from hard-working South Korean immigrants. They will promote Cho as "the model minority" who suddenly, for no reason, went crazy. Whereas eugenic approaches depicting Asians as crazy kamikazes or Viet Cong mercenaries emphasize Asian violence, the eugenic aspect of the model minority myth suggests that there is something about Asian Americans that makes them less prone to expressions of anger, rage, violence, or criminality. Indeed, we are not even seen as having legitimate reasons to have anger, let alone rage, hence the need to figure out what made this "quiet" student "snap."

Given that the model minority myth is a white racist invention that elevates Asians over minority groups, Cho will be dissected as an anomaly among South Koreans who "are not prone" to violenceâ€”unlike Blacks who are racistly viewed as inherently violent or South Asians, Middle Easterners and Muslims who are viewed as potential terrorists. He will be talked about as acting "out of character" from the other "good South Koreans" who come here and quietly and dutifully work towards the American dream. Operating behind the scenes of course is a diplomatic relationship between the US and South Korea forged through bombs and military zones during the Korean War and expressed through the new free trade agreement negotiations between the countries. Indeed, even as South Korean diplomats express concern about racial backlash against Asians, they are quick to disown Cho in order to maintain the image of the respectable South Korean.

Whatever happens, Cho will become whoever the white media wants him to be and for whatever political platform it and legislators want to push. In the process, Asian Americans will, like other non-whites, be picked apart, dissected, and theorized by whites. As such, this is no different than any other day for Asian Americans. Only this time an Asian face will be on every television screen, internet search engine, and newspaper.

Tamara K. Nopper is an educator, writer, and activist living in Philadelphia. She is currently finishing her PhD program in sociology at Temple University and is a volunteer with the Central Committee for Conscientious Objectors, an anti-war and counter-military recruitment organization (<a href="http://www.objector.org/">http://www.objector.org</a>). She can be reached at <a href="mailto:tnopper@yahoo.com">tnopper@yahoo.com</a>

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It seems to want to wake us up, and teach us lessons in impermanence and interconnectedness.

Take the killings at Virginia Tech.

A strange, quiet young Korean man, Cho Seung-Hui, writer of tortured and violent plays and screeds, makes his own solipsistic martial arts-gangsta video of himself, and sends it to the media, in the course of slaughtering 32 people, then killing himself.

The media sensationalizes it. MSNBC ratings go through the roof as its images are repeated, to millions and millions, then all the networks join in the frenzy. As expected, other troubled youth respond, in copy-cat fashion, often only with words, and scares shut down numerous classes across the country. At the same time, discussions of &#39;healing&#39; get underway.

Talk show commentators are having a time of it. I hear both liberal and conservatives alike carry on about &#39;looking in the face of evil&#39; and trashing the notions of illness and therapy. Rush Limbaugh and one caller on his show go on about how the Korean youth is an &#39;America hater,&#39; &#39;suicide bomber,&#39; and simply evil. Retired FBI guys talk about &#39;training&#39; students to be able to respond better, and hiring tougher &#39;security.&#39; People debate police tactics, censorship and guns.

Then a British paper goes to a tiny hut in Korea, and a reporter talks to the boy&#39;s grandparents, who say he was a bad kid and &#39;deserved to die&#39; for his sins.

But the grandparents also reveal the poverty of his parents as they immigrated to the U.S. Most important, they reveal their grandson was diagnosed early with autism, but the poverty all around prevented them from doing much about it, either in Korea or here.

Autism is recently growing with unusual speed in the US. Parents, rich and poor, are desperate for help, since dealing with an autistic child is often beyond any couple, however well off.

One radio personality, Don Imus, takes up their cause. He helps grow their organization for families of Autistic children, and raises millions. His wife, an environmentalist, believes toxins, perhaps in vaccines, are partly to blame, and demands independent research. Wealthy pharmaceutical companies and the Wall Street Journal counter-attack, smearing the couple. But Imus is relentless, and blasts away at their money-grubbing and lies. Largely through his efforts, a compromise measure, offering some relief, gets through Congress, but he pushes on for more substantive solutions, and raises millions more.

Now the effort has stopped, or is at least severely reduced. Imus, as we well know, also indulged in racist, sexist and chauvinist commentary and locker-room &#39;jokes,&#39; repeatedly, and finally went too far. He realized it, blamed himself and tried to make amends. He promised changes in his show, but accepted whatever he got, saying he had dished it out long enough, now it was his turn to take it.

But a groundswell wanted more. They wanted his show shut down, period, and it was. Many people declared victory over racism and sexism, and to a degree, it was. The media moguls preened about their new-found responsibility and the need for change.

At least until 32 people died at Virginia Tech.

Now we have a new wave of violence featured in the media, and Imus is old news, history.

And we have a new wave of blame, and a new staking out of moral ground against evil.

But you can make a good case that untreated autism, rooted in poverty, was the root cause of what happened at Virginia Tech, however terrible the consequences and the suffering visited on those who didn&#39;t deserve it in the least, just as the Rutgers women didn&#39;t deserve it in the least.

The whole thing reminds me of Thich Nhat Hanh&#39;s long poem, &#39;Call Me by My True Name.&#39; It&#39;s about looking deeply, in the poem, about a Thai sailor, and his raping and killing Vietnamese boat people. It&#39;s too long a story to retell here, but do yourself a favor and read it, or better yet, listen to it sometime.

But given this latest curve ball, I think I&#39;ll wait a bit before declaring either Don Imus or Cho Seung-Hui, connected in this curious way, to be evil, or at least, in the case of Imus, who&#39;s still with us, beyond public redemption.

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The Tangled Thicket of Cho seung-hui, Don Imus, YouTube and American Idol

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April 21st, 2007

Cho seung-hui, the Rutgers University women&#39;s basketball team, the students and Virginia Tech all form a tangled thicket nourished by the American media, overgrown with too many words, too many pictures and too many answers to too many bad questions. We, the American people struggle to navigate this thicket, for during the last few weeks we have only become more confused as if we have lost our sense of direction.

You can enter any of these words in a search engine and lose all hope of finding any rationality, any thread that will lead you out. Technorati lists 152,000 blog selections for Virginia Tech, 23,000 for Cho and 4,788 for the Rutgers&#39; team. With new posts on all of these each day, there are enough words that it would take a person probably a year to read them all. And yet we all seek a way out of this thicket of information, a clear path, a why that puts the last few weeks all in perspective.

That the media have become such a tangled thicket rather than a clear voice represents perhaps the only generalization we can draw from these events and an indication of what has happened to America&#39;s sources and ideas about information. During past tragedies-the Kennedy assassination, Jonestown, the space shuttle explosion-somehow the media brought us together and enabled us to not only have a common source of information but also a shared sense of perspective.

Just the opposite has occurred over the last few weeks. Instead of coming together we have thousands of information sources; instead of a shared sense of perspective we have something resembling a cubist painting crafted by a random group each with their own paints, brushes and sense of reality. Trying to come together has become an exercise in frustration, disappointment and even anger.

The equilibrium many have found may even be misleading, for it comes from linking with a group of like-minded people who share their own prejudices and views of the world. So instead of finding a way out of the thicket they only wander in circles, going round and round in the same place, but thinking they have found the true path. The gun control people, the gun nuts, the racists, each have their own sources, each of which views the events through a different set of glasses. It is as if one saw green where another saw red.

It is ironic that as the mainstream media have become more concentrated, the rest of our information sources have fragmented becoming the equivalent of those drug store magazine racks with titles and content that remain a mystery to those who are not part of whatever group to which that publication caters. We have an information system that in a metaphorical way reminds me of our increasing income gap, with a small amount at one end who have a lot and a lot at the other end who have only a small amount.

The concentration of the American media has had what systems people would call an unintended consequence, for with that concentration has come increasing distrust produced by that very concentration. When you are so concentrated and so big it is very hard to hear disparate opinions, harder to evaluate them, and all but impossible to find a insightful analysis.

That distrust in turn fuels the alternative media, for when people feel they are not listened to they turn to other sources. Those sources are most likely to be those whose web pages reflect their own minds. And because of our natural diversity, those alternative sources continue to multiply.

Other factors also are at work. One I term the American Idol myth. That show exists in part because of the first premise-that the media are so concentrated they can no longer truly connect with people and so they neglect natural talents that in another time would have been stars. But it also exists because more and more people hunger for their thirty minutes of fame in a society that gives people little personal reinforcement. Then there is the most troubling part of it all: egos that drive many to think they ARE good. You can find all these themes in Cho&#39;s video and writings.

Now transfer the previous paragraph to the world of information rather than entertainment. Our information sources no longer connect with people. People in turn think their information or research is as good as the experts. Pretty soon information and misinformation, truth and rumor become quickly entangled. You can find these themes in coverage of the shootings.

In a society without any common definitions of what is good and what is trash, what is valid and what is fantasy, it is not surprising that people should often wander over the line between them. And it should also not be a surprise that when they wander over that line they should also wander over the line between what is moral and what is hellish, what are values and what are prejudices. Don Imus, Cho, certain blogs and YouTube videos all have that in common, for their minds were in themselves tangles of their own egos, a false reality, and ultimately a lack of values.

Another factor is that the line between public and private no longer exists any more than the line between talent and trash, information and garbage. One of the most fascinating parts of both the Rutgers and Virginia Tech stories is that for the victims the media became almost as serious a problem as the perpetrators. In a story in this week&#39;s <em>Sports Illustrated</em>, the Rutgers women speak of being harassed by so many microphones and cameras that they were unable to lead normal lives. They talk about having to find ways to sneak to class so the media would not catch them or trying to escape the media in various way only to find the microphones have again invaded their privacy. One picture that sticks in my mind from Virginia Tech is of a banner hanging from a dorm saying "Media Stay Away," for those students, especially anyone with even the remotest connection to the shootings or the killer was hounded unmercifully.

Think of each of these as maps that could help lead us out of the tangle. The lines between expertise and trash, information and misinformation, public and private have blurred as if someone spilled water on the map so everything ran together. That is what we have to guide us out of that thicket.

The good news is that history tells us this information chaos is characteristic of changing times, especially times of large changes in how we understand and organize information. Marshall McLuhan saw this as driven by changes in media, so as we move from print to Internet just as we moved from oral sources to print, there is a period of unrest. Such periods, though, by their vary nature produce a flowering of creativity, some of which is not recognized until long after.

So in that thicket lie geniuses. The message, then, of chaotic times is paradoxical for it asks that instead of closing our minds and walling off alternative realities we need to remain open to them. As anyone who has been in the woods can tell you, the way out of a confusing thicket is not to keep walking circles, but to carefully mark where you are and then explore various alternatives. It would be tragic if after the last two weeks America was to become more suspicious, more rigid, more judgmental.

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Asian Identity of Virginia Tech Gunman

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Tuesday, April 17th, 2007

By now, I&#8217;m sure everybody has heard of the tragedy that took place yesterday, Monday April 16, at Virginia Tech University. Words cannot adequately convey the profound shock and sadness that I feel about this unthinkable human catastrophe. As an educator, a parent -- as a human being -- I am struggling to come to grips with the enormity of what happened but at the least, I want to convey my deepest, most sincere condolences to everyone affected by these killings.

You may have also heard that gunman has been <a href="http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070417/ap_on_re_us/virginia_tech_shooting" target="_blank">officially identified</a> as an Asian American -- <strong>Seung-Hui Cho</strong>, a 23 year old senior English major at Virginia Tech who originally immigrated from South Korea in 1992.

The Associated Press article cited above notes that he was referred to school counselors after his instructors found his creative writing rather disturbing. The <a href="http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-070417vtech-shootings,1,176236.story?coll=chi-newsnationworld-hed" target="_blank">Chicago Tribune</a> also reports that he apparently left a rambling suicide note that railed against &#8220;&#8216;rich kids,&#8217; &#8216;debauchery&#8217; and &#8216;deceitful charlatans&#8217; on campus&#8221; and that he had committed several strange and violent acts in recent weeks.

As a sociologist and Asian American Studies scholar, I will try to to put some sociological context into this horrific tragedy and several initial reactions come to mind:

If the gunman were White, his racial identity would go virtually unnoticed and unmentioned. However, because he was a person of color, much will probably be made of his racial identity. Specifically, because he was Asian American, much of the nation&#8217;s attention will be turned to examining what kinds of cultural characteristics may have influenced his behavior.

Also, inevitably, there will be some extreme reactions from xenophobes and people with anti-immigrant positions, perhaps along the lines of &#8220;This is what happens when we let in all kinds of immigrants, so we need to shut down our borders&#8221; or &#8220;We let in these damn foreigners and give them a chance at a better life and this is how they return the favor?&#8221; In addition, those who have anti-Asian sentiments are likely to say something like &#8220;Well, this just proves that Asians are so weird, foreign, and inscrutable --we just can&#8217;t trust them.&#8221;

Unfortunately these sorts of opinions are a classic example of confounding individual traits with group traits. In other words, yes, this one particular immigrant was responsible for this tragedy, but that does not mean that all immigrants or all Asian Americans are ticking psychopathic timebombs just waiting to go on a murderous rampage.

More likely, I think typical reactions will be along the lines of &#8220;Wow, I always thought Asian Americans were so quiet and passive&#8221; or &#8220;As an Asian, he must have been under a tremendous amount of pressure to do well in school.&#8221; Admittedly, these types of responses are a little harder to respond to because there are some kernels of truth to these particular sentiments.

For example, some Asian Americans do tend to be quiet and unassuming, although that is changing and also, much of these perceptions are based on biased media portrayals and cultural stereotypes. Nonetheless, the perception -- whether it&#8217;s true or not -- of Asians being quiet does exist. Similarly, it is also true that many Asian Americans, particular students, do experience a lot of pressure to succeed. In fact, I&#8217;ve written about <a href="http://www.asian-nation.org/headlines/2006/10/asian-americans-and-college-admissions/">such examples</a> before and <a href="http://www.asian-nation.org/headlines/2006/09/asian-american-students-still-deal-with-violence/">other barriers</a> many Asian American students regularly face.

To this mix, we can also add other examples in which various <a href="http://www.asian-nation.org/headlines/2006/05/rash-of-family-violence-among-asians/">social pressures</a> or <a href="http://www.asian-nation.org/headlines/2005/09/hmong-hunter-trial-to-start/">contentious incidents</a> have pushed Asian Americans over the edge, causing them to snap and commit murder. <strong>But does that mean that Asians are more prone to psychotic episodes</strong> that result in them killing those around them?

My answer is, absolutely not. If anything, I believe the opposite is true -- that despite having to frequently deal with various incidents of prejudice, hostility, and <a href="http://www.asian-nation.org/racism.shtml">outright racism</a>, the vast majority of Asian Americans react with dignity, courage, and perseverance. Perhaps too many still keep their emotions buried inside them and need to share their frustrations more openly in order to move beyond them, but as a group, I think that in the face of persistent examples of inequality and injustice, we do not react more violently than any other group.

Did the Virginia Tech gunman&#8217;s reasons include having to deal with racism as an Asian American? At this point, I don&#8217;t know. But if that turns out to be the case, my reaction would be the same as it was in the case of Chai Soua Vang, the Hmong American convicted of killing six White hunters in Wisconsin after a hostile encounter that allegedly contained anti-Asian profanities.

That is, many of us Asian Americans face racism as well, but we don&#8217;t go on murderous shooting rampages. In other words, my point is that ultimately, what Seung-Hui Cho did at Virginia Tech was an example of someone who was clearly <strong>emotionally unstable</strong> and that he just snapped for whatever reasons known only to him.

I would not be a sociologist if I did not also point to the culture of violent masculinity that frames mass shootings like this. My UMass Amherst colleague Sut Jhully has produced several acclaimed documentaries that detail this phenomenon, most notably the video <a href="http://www.mediaed.org/videos/MediaGenderAndDiversity/ToughGuise" target="_blank"><em>Tough Guise</em></a>. For now, I will leave it up to him and others who have greater expertise in this particular sociological context to contribute their analysis.

In the end, this entire episode is an opportunity to remind Asian Americans and anyone else out there who are facing emotional issues or challenging situations that there are resources out there for them to access in order to more constructively deal with those pressures before they get out of hand. Suffering in silence doesn&#8217;t help anyone.

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Immigrant Status of VA Tech Gunman: Does it Matter?

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Thursday, April 19th, 2007

Following up on my <a href="http://www.asian-nation.org/headlines/2007/04/asian-identity-of-virginia-tech-gunman/">last post</a> about Seung Hui Cho, the Virginia Tech gunman, the evidence that&#8217;s coming out seems to suggest that among other things, he felt ridiculed for his social class background (at least in comparison to the &#8216;rich&#8217; kids that he railed against in his suicide note and video) and for being quiet -- but apparently not specifically for being Asian.

In other words, it does not seem that he was lashing out in reaction to incidents of racial prejudice or discrimination. I personally feel somewhat relieved to know that prejudice can now be removed from the equation. Why is that comforting to know? Because to me, it means that Asians and Koreans on the one hand, will not have to engage in the &#8220;<strong>blame game</strong>&#8221; with non-Asians on the other (specifically those who would have been the perpetrators of prejudice against him).

Nonetheless, a different aspect to the media&#8217;s coverage of his situation has gotten my attention and that of many others. Specifically, a lot of analysts, commentators, and observers have brought up the fact that he originally immigrated to the U.S. from Korea. One example of this is to refer to him in the traditional Asian way of using the surname first -- Cho Seung-Hui, instead of the American version-- Seung-Hui Cho.

Does his immigrant status make a difference in trying to understand what he did?

For many Asian Americans, the answer is no. First of all, even though he was originally from South Korea, he immigrated at a relatively early age -- 8. According to sociologists and demographers, that makes him part of the &#8220;1.5 generation&#8221; -- in between the first generation (that would be his parents) and the second generation (those born in the U.S.).

The distinction of being 1.5 generation also includes being raised and socialized primarily as an American. In other words, most of his formative schooling took place in the U.S. and by all accounts, he was perfectly fluent in English. In fact, he was so Americanized that he majored in English, rather than majors normally associated with Asian immigrants such as engineering, math, the &#8216;hard&#8217; sciences, etc.

So why is it that so many people commented and even focused so intently on the fact that he originally immigrated from South Korea?

I think the answer is that they were consciously or unconsciously trying to <strong>culturally distance themselves</strong> from him. In other words, by emphasizing that he was an immigrant, they were basically saying &#8220;He was a foreigner, an outsider -- he wasn&#8217;t one of us, he wasn&#8217;t a &#8216;real&#8217; American. &#8216;Real&#8217; Americans would never have done something like this.&#8221;

That is, even though he was basically socialized as an American, much of America refuses to accept that he was in fact an American. And with underlying sentiments like that, they only function to reinforce notions of Korean Americans and Asian Americans as <strong>perpetual foreigners</strong>. In other words and unfortunately, many Asian Americans still need to overcome the perception that they are not &#8220;real&#8221; Americans.

This particular stereotype exists even though many Asian American families have been in the U.S. several generations, even though we tend to be the most educated racial group in the U.S., even though we are the group most likely to have high-skilled jobs, and even though on the family level, we have the highest income of all racial groups.

Of course, there are specific ethnic differences in this generalization, but the point is that in virtually all other respects of what it means to be an &#8220;American,&#8221; we meet or exceed those standards. But for various reasons, most of which have to do with our skin color and distinct physical appearance to be perfectly blunt, we&#8217;re more likely to be seen as foreigners.

That is exactly what is going on in this instance, with the American media&#8217;s focus on Cho&#8217;s immigrant status. In trying to distance &#8216;real&#8217; Americans from him, American society is only reinforcing the notion that Asian Americans are not &#8216;real&#8217; Americans. In the end, even though we may grieve and cry just like the rest of American society, we still have to pay a price for what he did.

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Korean Reaction to VA Tech Shootings: Guilt vs. Solidarity

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Sunday, April 22nd, 2007

At the risk of overanalyzing the events surrounding the shootings at Virginia Tech last week, I would like to offer one last set of observations. In my previous posts, I&#39;ve acknowledged that certainly, there are many complicated emotions and reactions to these tragic events. This also applies to Koreans and Korean Americans, for whom this event stirs up additional feelings that include <b>guilt, shame, and embarrassment</b> based on the fact that the gunman was Korean American.

As one article from <a href="http://news.newamericamedia.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=2d3b885a913020630dd2537a0eeaf9ed">New American Media</a> describes, many Koreans felt that Cho&#39;s murderous rampage tarnished the image of Koreans and Korean Americans and that it would lead to a backlash against them. Korean government officials have also issued repeated apologies, perhaps fearing that an association with Cho would interfere with their diplomatic and/or economic relations with Americans.

In talking about this particular issue with my Korean American colleagues, many of them observe that for whatever reasons, many Asian Americans in general, but Koreans in particular, are very quick to personalize and internalize the high-profile public failures of anyone identified as Korean or Korean American, and to therefore feel a deep and profound sense of humiliation and guilt about such events. The implication is that somehow, the entire Korean/Korean American community is "responsible" or "at fault" in some way for Cho&#39;s actions.

In contrast, many Koreans/Korean Americans, particularly younger or more "Americanized" members, feel that while they obviously share in the shock, grief, and sorrow regarding the tragic events at Virginia Tech, their community should not have to feel that they are somehow responsible for what Cho did just because he was Korean American, in the same way that Whites as a collective group were not responsible for the shooting massacre at Columbine High School eight years ago, nor any of the other high-profile school shootings in recent American history.

I happen to agree with that sentiment, but I think it&#39;s a more complicated issue than that.

The question that comes to mind for me is, where do we as Asian Americans draw the line between <b>shared guilt versus group solidarity</b>? In other words, in most other respects, many Asian Americans including myself have consistently tried to encourage a sense of pan-Asian American unity and solidarity. This effort is based on the notion that in emphasizing our commonalities and uniting as a collective group, Asian Americans can speak with a louder and more powerful collective voice in American society, rather than as isolated individuals or ethnicities.

But with that in mind, is it then a contradiction to disassociate ourselves from Seung-Hui Cho in this case, and basically say that he wasn&#39;t "one of us" and to reject any insinuation that his ethnicity had anything to do with his actions (which would also imply that some Asian American may share some of his feelings of alienation, etc.)?

Ultimately, I don&#39;t think that it has to be an either-or proposition. That is, we can still say that ultimately Cho&#39;s actions should be understood as the <b>aberrant behavior of an extremely troubled individual</b>, while at the same time saying that his mental illness could have been made worse by <u><b>feeling like an outsider and ridiculed for being different</b></u> -- sentiments that inevitably do exist among many Asian Americans.

Thankfully, even though many Asian Americans may have similar feelings of alienation, they do not react by going on a murderous rampage. Nonetheless, we as Asian Americans should recognize and advocate that (1) we be treated with respect and tolerance -- especially those who might be otherwise seen as outcasts, (2) members of our community who are emotionally troubled be actively encouraged to seek help, and (3) mental health services should be readily available and culturally-competent.

These efforts would go a long way in preventing not just tragic incidents like this, but also in reducing the difficulties many Asian American face in the complicated process of finding our identity within the complicated American racial landscape.

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Cho Seung-Hui: A Lone Deranged Gunman?

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<p>Thursday, April 19. 2007</p>
<p>As all of America mourns the deaths which occurred on the Virginia Tech campus, bloggers are drawing comparisons to the body count that issues daily from Iraq. See a particularly poignant post from Floyd Rudmin of <b>commondreams.org</b> titled "32 Senseless Deaths: A Chance for Empathy, Change of Heart, and Change of Course" which concludes:</p>
<blockquote>The tragedy at Virginia Tech was caused by lone gunman, probably deranged. It was a one-time event. It is finished. The tragedy in Iraq was caused by the US government, with the over-whelming support of the US Congress, most of the US media, and much of the US population. This war was planned and executed by rational men and women, none of them deranged.</blockquote>
<blockquote>The US decided to start the war against Iraq.</blockquote>
<blockquote>The US decided to destroy the infrastructure of Iraq.</blockquote>
<blockquote>The US decided to destroy the Iraqi government and to disband its police and army.</blockquote>
<blockquote>The US decided to send too few soldiers to secure the nation after doing these destructive deeds.</blockquote>
<blockquote>And the tragedy of Iraq is not a one-time event. It is not finished. It continues, apparently without end.</blockquote>
<blockquote>By many reports, the US is now preparing to start another war, this time against Iran.</blockquote>
<blockquote>Americans feeling the shock and grief of the tragedy at Virginia Tech should look into their hearts and realize that they through their government are bringing this same tragedy again, and again, and again, and again, and again, endlessly and needlessly, to other people in the world who also have hearts that can be torn out, who also feel grief and loss when family and friends are suddenly killed when doing ordinary things of life, like going to school.</blockquote>
<blockquote>Tragic deaths force us to feel our humanity and to see we are similar to others in the world. The tragic deaths in Virginia might serve to motivate Americans to curb their militarism and to minimize the tragedies of sudden death that they have been bringing to other families in the world.</blockquote>
<blockquote>Read the <a href="http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/04/18/593/">full article</a>.</blockquote>
<p>It is heartening to witness a vigorous debate emerging online as people come to terms with these killings and their significance, not only for the victims and their families and friends, but for an entire culture. As Americans draw comparisons to Iraq, we who are not American are reminded that America is a house divided. I sometimes catch myself drawing hasty generalizations, styling all Americans as arrogant war-mongerers. But the comments I read online remind me that, in fact, those who share the president&#39;s world view stand in a minority. I must pause to recognize that most Americans grieve for the state of their country and fear for their safety abroad. As non-Americans, our generalizations merely implicate us in the sins we condemn.</p>
<p>Perhaps a more difficult task comes in moderating the generalizations we make as we consider Cho Seung-Hui who was the perpetrator of these killings. Every account I have read thus far refers to him as "deranged." Doubtless a person who commits mass murder is mentally ill. But the use of this particular epithet continues the media habit of drawing a causal connection between violence and mental illness. This is an oversimplification, much like the suggestion that American troops are in Iraq to stabilize a country that has no infrastructure of its own.</p>
<p>The media&#39;s continuing association of violence and mental illness perpetuates the stigma which haunts millions of people who suffer from major mental health issues. In fact, mental illness is <b>not</b> a significant indicator of violence. See this pdf document from the <a href="http://theoblog.ca/serendipity/archives/www.camh.net/education/Resources_communities_organizations/addressing_stigma_senatepres03.pdf">Centre for Addiction and Mental Health</a>. Indicators which are more significant include: youth, male gender, and history of violence or substance abuse. Let me make that a little clearer: if you are a male, that fact alone is a stronger predictor of violent behaviour than if you suffer from schizophrenia. A non-clinical list of indicators might also include such factors as availability of weapons and exposure to desensitizing materials (e.g. video games, movies, media that televise a killer&#39;s manifesto and cell phone video of shots being fired, etc). From the CAMH document comes this quote:</p>
<blockquote>"While it is true that some people who have a mental illness do commit crimes, public perceptions of mentally ill persons as criminally dangerous are exaggerated. In fact, 80 to 90 percent of people with mental illness never commit violent acts. <i>They are actually more likely to have acts of violence committed against them</i>, particularly homeless individuals who may also have a mental illness." (Italics added.)</blockquote>
<p>If the mentally ill are more likely to be victims of violent acts, then it is possible that Cho Seung-Hui only became a risk <i>after</i> he was, himself, victimized. Following the shootings at Columbine, it was revealed that the shooters, Harris & Klebold, were victims of significant bullying. The same is probably true in this instance. See here for a <a href="http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20070416/school_shootings_070415">profile of Cho</a>.</p>
<p>Let&#39;s not perpetrate a generalization about mental illness. Let&#39;s seize this moment as an opportunity to put an end to a cycle of violence by putting an end to our fears of mental illness. I would invite Floyd Rudmin and <b>commondreams.org</b> to revise their post. There were 33 senseless deaths. To state that there were 32 reveals a stigmatizing bias that we must reckon with. Otherwise, our generalizations merely implicate us in the sins we condemn.</p>
<p>Posted by <a href="http://theoblog.ca/serendipity/authors/1-David-Barker">David Barker</a> in <a href="http://theoblog.ca/serendipity/categories/8-HealthMental-Health">Health/Mental Health</a> at <a href="http://theoblog.ca/serendipity/archives/248-Cho-Seung-Hui-A-Lone-Deranged-Gunman.html">23:08</a></p>
<p>--</p>
<p>Original Source: <a href="http://theoblog.ca/serendipity/archives/248-Cho-Seung-Hui-A-Lone-Deranged-Gunman.html">http://theoblog.ca/serendipity/archives/248-Cho-Seung-Hui-A-Lone-Deranged-Gunman.html</a></p>
<p>Licensed under <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/">Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5</a>.</p>

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I know very little about profoundly deviant behavior of this sort. It has never much interested me. I tend to turn off the channels where it is dealt with.

I have extended familial ties to some protracted and difficult cases but rarely anything profoundly deviant like this. I have also had many friends and acquaintances who cope with various forms of mental illness in their relationships both near and extended. But this seems to be of a different sort...I think. I so far believe it isn&#39;t a "9" on a scale where many folks are showing up at the mental health center with a level 4 or 5 problem. But on that I may be sadly wrong. Things erode rapidly sometimes. Tear out hope from people and prospects go decay in a hurry. But people are usually self-destructive first...not outwardly destructive. Something is different when people need to spread a blight.

It seems to me that the Virginia Tech murderer reached several cross-over points. For example, he constructed an identity of persecution. I am sure he had opportunities to back out of this, but he chose not to. He wanted to be persecuted. I notice this desire in many larger groups...sometimes whole nations. It is a need to be selected as a target of unfairness. At some level we all feel it. It is very hard to look for a job, for example, in academia without some sense of constant rejection. Maybe it is luck to get help or a positive turn, and some folks just aren&#39;t lucky. Maybe Cho never got cut a break. But it seems like he did get at least a few breaks to hear it from his roommates. He CHOSE to not find happiness.

Perhaps that paranoia is an element of a broader delusional identity, but all that sounds annoyingly redundant. I must say that the psychological descriptions of these things feel inadequate. It is as if there are things unsaid or said as categorizations that seem deficient to offer any insight beyond a label. There is a Peanuts cartoon with Lucy psychoanalyzing Charlie Brown&#39;s fears. She says that if we can find out what he is afraid of..."we" can label it. It ends there to some ironic comic effect. The label is all Charlie Brown is going to get. DSM IV is my sister-in-law&#39;s bible on these things. I have seen her read it at length. But from what I have seen of it, it is often very uncertain and highly generalized in its descriptions. Can anyone be paranoid on a given day? I often wonder whether people who are less than nice all the time carry the burden of common labels. Identity is profound in all these cases.

Universities clearly gather many people who are loners, focused, obsessive, and often politically extreme. But violence is not the usual outlet, so far as I can tell. I think I have read that suicides are typically higher amongst graduate students than the norm, but that might be also readily expected from the stress. One sees faculty and students alike who demonstrate all sorts of unsual forms of expression or self-awareness. Sometimes it comes as a rarified sense of aesthetic or insight. Other forms come as a need to be "in" or considered "bright." Some thrive on power or influence over others as a teacher or mentor or special peer. Still other forms come as a need to be considered of a particular ethical purity. Usually it is exacting in my experience. There is a need for precision far beyond what could be taken as usual or appropriate.

This sort of intensity is a form of boundary spanning that can be innovative if benign. Or it can be destructive, and often minimally policed. Given the general collapse of collective standards in the academy, I think these sorts of explosions are my likely than we&#39;d like to think. I also think they are playing out in mini versions all too often. But people find means of coping and controlling themselves. Here that control was not present. An artist or innovator must also loosen the bounds of control, but there is a commitment to not hurt. It is almost like the difference between the responsible community business person and the naked aggression of a self-serving capitalist. There is a different...ethic. But is there a different psychology? And what would that mean? The identity is formed as it encounters situations. Context is everything...but also not everything. We must know actors, actor prior states, and contexts. But perhaps we must also know context prior states. It is difficult to say the least.

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In Cho&#39;s defence...

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Saturday, April 21, 2007

<i>"this is a lesson for all o. i think those American parents should learn a lesson or 2 from this. with the way their kids tease other people of different nationalities. i went to school abroad as well, and i can tell you that most people, even the adult students have no regard for others. if you aint speaking the language like them, or don&#39;t look like them, its hard to mix. i&#39;m not generalizing, but its a pattern ive noticed. hence it leaves people feeling isolated from others. i think people should be taught these subtle signs and not to ignore others. no be by force, but at least make an effort to make other people feel welcome. this matter was a big issue in the school i went to. if you aint white, forget it. no-one wants to have anything to do with you, no matter how extroverted or social you are."</i> <b>- Soulpatrol (Nairaland)</b>

Being a foreigner myself set me thingking... what could have made a man shoot 31 innocent people before taking his own life?

It&#39;s easy to plant flowers at memorials, write words we don&#39;t mean on tombstones and whiteboards, talk about how good people were on facebook. . . if only we did this when we each could appreciate each other perhaps such episodes could be a thiing of the past. How could a fellow not have any friends for 4 years?? Everyone is talking about him being the weird kid who never talked, some are busy posting his plays on the internet, professors are describing a disturbed kid they think they did a huge favour by sending to see a psychiatrist. Where was everyone when a simple "how did your day go" would have averted this problem?

How many times was Cho abandoned in the back of the class with everyone sniggering at that "weird asian kid who never talked"? I find it so difficult to imagine me sharing a room with another individual and him having issues that warranted psychiatric evaluation and police questioning and yet doing absolutely nothing! Only to appear on CNN after the shootings to hug the limelights as the room mates of a weirdo!!!

His family never visited and no one cared to ask why. He never went on holidays and no one bothered to invite him home even when they lived just a stone&#39;s throw from the school. He wrote scary plays and his classmates prefered to turn them into discussion points rather than reach out to someone who was clearly troubled. How many times do we push people away because they don&#39;t look like us, talk like us or think like us? How many times have we been so ignorant and selfish forgetting to help those around us who need just one person to make them feel loved and accepted? It is easy to talk about healing, fly flags at halfmast, cancel school, while pretending to honor the memories of those that died when we are merely reaping the fruits of our selfishness, rejection of others and inability to stretch a hand of fellowship.

Of course this in no way attempts to justify Cho&#39;s act but it is a reminder to us that there are thousands of other Cho&#39;s around us. They may never pick up a gun and shoot their classmates but deep inside are living a life that is empty. Luxury can never take the place of love and acceptance, if one person cared for his neighbour perhaps much more than stricter gun laws, we may be able to save someone else from going the lonely road to perdition.

I wonder what would have happened to Cho had he not carried out his act. Many of us leave college with healthy memories that would linger forever. What would Cho have left with?

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News Worthiness

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Thursday, April 19, 2007

Since releasing the excerpts from the package sent by Virginia Tech killer Cho Seung-Hui, NBC News has received more than just a little criticism. Indeed, this story is so big that every little nuance... anything remotely connected to the story is being put under a microscope and reported on <i>ad nauseam</i>. Ironically enough, the decision to air the material delivered to NBC News has become itself a news story.

If not for the "gift" left by Cho, the media would be filling all of that airtime and every available inch with anything and everything it could discover about this "seriously disturbed individual." Cho saved the media a huge amount of legwork and opened insights about what drove him. Did he get what he wanted? Some are saying that by airing this "manifesto," Cho has ultimately won.

But think about how ridiculous that sounds. Cho is dead - and he&#39;s not getting any better. Last I checked, to get any enjoyment or satisfaction from an act, one must be alive to experience it. Furthermore, even if Cho could somehow relish his media spotlight from the grave, he would soon realize that no one agrees that he was any kind of victim. He would be crestfallen in the discovery that he is being regarded - at best - as "a seriously disturbed young man." Mostly he&#39;s being viewed as some kind of homicidal whacko.

For those with a religious leaning, I&#39;m guessing that Cho&#39;s last act earned him a one-way ticket straight to Hell. Do not pass go, do not collect $200. Yet he is somehow enjoying the last laugh? I don&#39;t think so. Does this coverage intensify the pain of the community, the survivors and the victims&#39; families? Undoubtedly, but surely they would understand that news of this magnitude must be reported. Even without Cho&#39;s help, there would be extensive coverage of Cho - a disproportionate amount.

But even without considering the civic responsibility of the news business, let us remember that it is a business. If no one tuned into this stuff, no one would report it. People want to know, despite how much they say they don&#39;t. The numbers don&#39;t lie. Did NBC and others overdo it? Was there more coverage of Cho&#39;s package than "necessary?" That&#39;s a matter of opinion and judgment. But to say that NBC had a responsibility to quash this information is nonsense. They have a responsibility to report it.

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Now You Have Blood On Your Hands That Will Never Come Off

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Wednesday, April 18, 2007

Cho Seung-Hui, a 23-year-old senior majoring in English at Virginia <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/virginia+tech">Tech</a>, has completed his transformation from Clark Kent to, well, Rambo. Having killed and maimed over thirty people, in a calculated and merciless way, he has shown another facet of evil and pain to the world. Alone, bitter, unhappy and insane, his sad story reverberates on several levels.

Is it better to have stricter gun control, or have more guns in the hands of law abiding people to protect themselves? Have privacy laws and rights for the mentaly disabled gone too far, or should involuntary committment for treatment be easier to order? Has community and the support of family been destroyed by the cheapening of our culture, or has the stigma of needing help become so great that those most in need shun it?

There were heros at Virgina Tech - Professor Lucinda Roy, who tried so hard to get Mr. Cho the help he so badly needed; another Professor, Liviu Librescu, a 76 year old Holocaust survivor who gave his life offering his body as a shield for his students; during the aftermath the poet, Nikki Giovanni, leading students in a cheer to affirm that they will survive and be stronger - &#39;We are HOKIES!&#39;.

<i>But there is one party who will not be a hero during all this</i>, and that is the National Broadcasting Company news organization. After Mr. <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/cho">Cho</a> shot his first two victims in his dormitory, he made a rambling videotape with his jeremiad on debauched rich students and how they had driven him to this action, shortly before he entered a classroom, chained the doors shut and killed thirty more people. This insane person took the time to film and mail his video between murders, and <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/nbc">NBC</a> chose to make it public.

Poor Dylan Klebold - he never thought of making videos before killing his classmates at Columbine High School. Now, Mr. Cho has created a new item in the iconography of mass murder, one that we will surely see again. We have come a long way from the days when shooting Ronald Reagan to impress Jodie Foster was a ticket to fifteen minutes of fame and becoming an answer on a Trivial Pursuit card. Now we present a news network with 27 videos, 43 photographs and an 1,800-word narration described as "multimedia manifesto" from a "uniquely sick mind." NBC was quick to turn the package over to the FBI, right after making copies for itself.

Mr. Cho could be speaking to NBC when he observes, "You had 100 billion chances and ways to have avoided today, but you decided to spill my blood. You forced me into a corner and gave me only one option. The decision was yours. Now, you have blood on your hands that will never wash off." By choosing to give this presentation the validation of a platform, NBC has sent our nation and our heritage just one more step down a dank and violent road.

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Seung Cho and what I know

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I was in his playwriting class last fall. I was always a quiet guy myself, not really making too many friends during my years at Virginia Tech. On a couple of occasions, we&#39;d end up sitting close to each other. I had always thought that Cho was a little "off" but since I was strange in my own right, I didn&#39;t think too much of it. People like Cho and I never seem to make friends easily and the fact that we were both loners of sorts made me pay a little more attention to him that usual.

Just before Christmas I passed by Seung Cho while he was walking around the Drill Field, a little more sad-looking than usual. I offered him a cigarette which he refused with a wave of his hand. I then tried to talk to him about one of the plays we had recently reviewed in class and he finally started talking a little. We talked about the plot and the characters when suddenly Cho asked me what others had thought about his "Richard McBeef" story.

It was then that I told Seung Cho that some of the others in the class were a little concerned with his writing. Seung seemed to get a kick out of that because he suddenly had a smile where only a grin existed before. I told him that some people were talking about him before class, talking about he was a little strange acting and with this play of his, some other students joked about him being a charter member of the trenchcoat mafia. Cho wondered what that was, so I told him about the whole Littleton, Colorado school shooting. He seemed intrigued by my words. We talked a little more about "sticking it to the man" and how good it feels to break things sometimes. I used to steal cars and smash them into buildings, Seung mentioned he liked to hurt things. I didn&#39;t ask anymore questions.

After that day I thought differently about Seung-Hui Cho. I thought I might read about him in the paper one day, and not for any good reason.

And then it happened. All over the news. School shooting at Virginia Tech. My first thoughts when my mother called and asked me if I was okay was, " I wonder if it was Cho?!" After getting off the phone with my mom, I smiled a little knowing that Cho had gotten what he wanted. Revenge.

Cho Seung-Hui has gone and done what many of us "loners" only wish we had the courage do to. I too have often thought of taking my anger out on innocents, but unlike Seung Cho, I just don&#39;t have the courage to pull the trigger. He did.

I feel bad for the victims, but not too much. Perhaps people will start paying closer attention to us loners before we end up making ourselves popular, for all the wrong reasons!